This is an interesting thread. I quite like breadcrumbs and was interested
to hear about whether they are accessible, and what are the best ways to
make them accessible.
The Zeldman alistapart approach someone referred to is here...
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/
I have used it here
http://www.impingtonswimmingclub.org.uk/results/2004/sudbury/report.html
It seems quite a clean approach but then I dont use a screen reader so I was
interested to learn about the accessibility aspects of this approach.
Instead we seem to be discussing the relative merits of using breadcrumbs at
all. Some recent findings have indicated that they are ineffective, and yet
some usability experts seem to use them on their own sites...
http://www.useit.com/papers/telephone_usability.htmlhttp://www.asktog.com/columns/063HolisticDesign.html
And several fairly switched on sites use this sort of thing, eg.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/699444/ref=br_bx_1_c_1_5/202
-1325684-1103065
My point is that the use of breadcrumb navigation is still open for debate.
Some people want to use them and some dont. It doesn't seem that helpful
when someone is trying to use something like breadcrumbs in an accessible
way to say "dont use breadcrumbs". Where does this leave them? Just doing
the breadcrumbs anyway (perhaps the client insisted on this) but learning
nothing about how to make them accessible.
Still interested in answers to the original question Tim asked, "Just
looking at how best to present "breadcrumbs" to users in the most accessible
format." Assuming breadcrumbs a given, how do you make them accessible - how
bad is the approach of using lists? Which is more accessible <ul> or <ol>?
Carl